The invention disclosed herein relates to improved value printing devices such as electronic postage meters or registers, in which a novel system is provided for automatically signaling the device that a new ink roller has been inserted.
The invention also relates to such improved printing devices in which a novel system is provided for automatically and electronically warning the operator that an ink roller needs to be replaced by a fresh one.
Value printing devices such as labeling apparatus, postage meters and registers, and the like, print information onto a surface by contacting the surface with print characters which are inked typically just prior to the printing event. In a postage meter, for example, relative motion occurs between the print characters and an inking roller which contains its own supply of ink, which contacts and, thus inks the characters. While the various inventive aspects which follow will be described in connection with commercially available postage meters, it will be understood that they apply to any printing device with like characteristics.
In rotary-head postage meters and registers, such as Pitney Bowes' Models 5300, 6300 and 6500 meters, the print characters are contained in a rotary printing head which revolves relative to a stationary inking roller during the print cycle. When the raised print characters encounter the inking roller, they make contact and are thus inked. In the so called flat-bed postage meter, such as Pitney Bowes' Model 5700 series meter, the print characters are contained on a horizontal, flat printing head. The mailpiece to be marked is moved rapidly against the printing head with enough force to be marked. In the print cycle, the inking roller and its support carriage is moved across the print characters just before printing, the characters remaining stationary. After printing, the roller moves back across the printing head to its original rest position. The invention to be described can apply to both rotary and flat-bed postage meters and registers, but will be described specifically with regard to a flat-bed Model 5700 series meter, a meter available commercially for many years.
Various aspects of this type of postage meter have been described in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,069,084; 3,244,096; 3,310,139; and of a special interest to this disclosure U.S. Pat. No. 3,143,963. The latter patent relates to means for limiting the number of cycles of a postage meter in accordance with the capacity of the inking roller and thereafter rendering the ink roller unfit for use in the postage meter.
Currently, in the example of the Pitney Bowes' Model 5700 series postage meter, an ink roller is replaced when, in the operator's judgment, the impressions produced by the meter grow faint or weak. In some of the present day postage meters and registers, when a used cartridge is removed from the device, automatic security functions in the device disable it from use so that there is no risk of the operator mistakenly using postage values stored within the meter in the absence of a new cartridge having been inserted. However, when a new cartridge is inserted, the operator must remember to take appropriate steps with the device to cancel the disabled function so that the machine can then be used to print postage. Further, as before mentioned, there is currently no way for an operator to determine accurately when an inking cartridge has approached the end of its useful life. It is strictly within the operator's observation and discretion to determine when the postage impressions grow so faint or weak that a new cartridge must be inserted.